Last year saw New York label 577 Records re-release Onosante, a session of quartet improvisations originally released as a limited edition in 2000 on Paul Dunmall’s Duns label and featuring Dunmall with guitarist Philip Gibbs, Keith Tippet on piano and drummer Peter Fairclough. Recorded five years later in the same Bristol concert hall, Mahogany Rain is a single sustained – and spellbinding - quartet improvisation featuring Dunmall, Tippett and Gibbs with vocalist Julie Tippetts.

Given the breadth of musical experience in the room it would have been surprising if great music had not resulted but surely even the four protagonists, longtime improvisational collaborators in various contexts, must have been struck by the electrifying rapport generated during this recording.

Throughout the piece’s 63 minutes there is an almost supernatural intimacy of exchange and respectful reciprocation between the players as they discover a spontaneous sonic landscape and chart an unerring collective course through it.

Dunmall and Tippett, especially, were never afraid of bombast yet for this reflective piece they restrained themselves, instead sharing in an exploration of tone and texture and melodic ideas circling around Julie Tippetts’ extraordinary vocal vocabulary, underpinned by Gibbs’ atmospheric use of the guitar.

As the piece unfolds with an impeccable musical logic, there are elaborate duets, moments of stillness, others of quickfire interaction and all executed with consideration for the same essential vision.

This is so much more than just a great session – in reviving Mahogany Rain, 577 Records have unearthed one of the true masterpieces of spontaneous composition.